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Professor Jimbles Presents! A Rant: Does anyone else die a lot?

Hi! Jimbles here to ask a question of you: How often do you die in your games? All the time? Occasionally, but only because you make stupid decisions?

I can tell you that I die all the time in Pathfinder, but it’s generally my fault. Whenever I develop a high-concept character with tragic backstory and a good reason to set out adventuring, I often forget that ever so important stat keeping most of us alive… The armor class.

That, and I roll terribly when someone’s life depends on it.

Aside from the misadventures in the Crow (See earlier post for THAT particular embarrassing tale.) I’ve had characters die in the following ways:

Battle Toad (Boggard Barbarian Chieftain) exacted revenge with a warhammer for causing general chaos in the area and invading his shrine.

Lich fingered me to death in a oh-so-calm response to taking 38 damage from my surprise round greatsword attack.

Teleport mishap sent me to the Elemental Plane of PAIN. (Fire burns!)

Learned the hard way that Black Puddings are not delicious.

Felled by the Orc Hireling in a single strike.

Crushed by a brainwashed dragon after a Sudden Maximized disintegrate missed.

And that’s just in my Pathfinder and 3.5 games! Here, let me explain some of these stupid, stupid adventures…

The Battle Toad was only fairly recently. Found in “Curse of the Lady’s Light“, a group of troglodytes had ceased to worship their traditional Demon Lord by the name of Zevgavizeb. A HUGE pyrohydra living nearby was seen as a incarnation of Zevgavizeb, and totally worth worshiping, until they changed their ways. To get rid of it for the tribe, we baited it with our delicious flesh through a series of misadventures (including a bear.) We lead it to the main boggard village, since they are the mortal enemies of the Troglodytes. Sadly, innocent boggard villagers with improvised weapons and tearful sobs about missing loved ones are no match for 3d6 fire damage every 1d4 rounds [Editor’s Note: Not how I’d have phrased it, “evil boggard villagers with well crafted and cruelly designed weapons screaming bloody murder” sounds more accurate… though the bit about the fire damage is true enough]. Three adventurers do what adventurers do best. I also do what I do best, and nearly die. Anyway, this is just all backstory to the “General Chaos” I mentioned. We make our way into the tunnel system that breaks into the Lady’s Light and encroach on Chief Battle-Toad’s shrine, killing three of his friends (also the only survivors of his tribe). He expresses his disapproval with a raging max-damage Warhammer crit to my face. Thus ends Keira Strongarm, lost daughter of a human settlement and best archer that elven caravan had seen in a long time. Her lists of deeds long and heroic, but sadly hammer beats face… repeatedly. [Editor’s Note: As Jhonen Vasquez taught us, anything can indeed be beaten, if you have a big enough hammer…]

It was a prelude adventure for 3.5, ran by my friend Adam, the DM of my high school days. He explained it as an “experiment”. I built up a great Elven Paladin, on a quest to restore glory to the lost Elven colonies. The party was sent out to pick up a Dwarven artifact to fund another expedition. We move room by room in the dark depths and eventually come across the best spot to hide something like that. A sarcophagus. A fantastically beautiful, well made, ornate sarcophagus made of stone and crafted by clearly the greatest smiths of this generation. I sensed great evil emanating from there. We dragged it open and I readied an action to power attack and smite for all it’s worth. Clearly it wasn’t effective enough. The lich opened its eyes, assessed the situation, and poked me. One failed fort save (And one failed pity fort save.) later, and I was staring at “4d6, discard the lowest.” That adventure didn’t go too much further anyway. I blame my lack of guidance.

Anyway, that’s all for now, folks. I’ll tell the other misadventures soon. What I’d like from you guys is the best tale of your unfortunate, unfortunate death. See you in the comments!